Welcome. Welcome and good afternoon, everybody. I am delighted to present you a speaker today, Professor David Tull, who is,
among other things, the OCR elsewhere in modern Israeli studies at the University of Sussex.
Previously he was the kind of chair in these was in Israeli studies at the University of Calgary,
and he has written extensively on Israel's security and diplomatic history.
Among the many works he published. I know just a few.
The American Nuclear Disarmament Disarmament Dilemma, published by Syracuse University Press in 2008 and War in Palestine 1948.
Strategy and Diplomacy published by Routledge in 2003.
The title of his talk today, The Making of an Ally of Alliance, The Making and History of US-Israeli Relationship,
is also the title of his forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press.
Because of that, thank you for coming. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.
As Yaakov said, I'm working now on a book which you will discuss the origin development, the history of the American-Israeli relationship.
It's about from Plato to Natal that this is going to confer really the range of
relationship from the mid 19th century up to well it's very difficult to say,
but up to quantity present in this talk today.
And I would like to introduce to you what I think are the core ideas,
the core concepts that are in the base of the Israeli American relationship, and which I think are what I call constants in this relationship.
That is this core idea is, as far as I understand it,
these core ideas are what drives a driven in the past and still I think drives the American Israeli special relationship.
It was President John F Kennedy who told Golda meir in December 1962 that.
Well, what is that?
The United States has a special relationship with Israel in the Middle East, really comparable only to that which it has with Britain.
And historians are arguing over the question when the special relationship had begun, what is the nature of the special relationship?
And I will argue that this relationship had started very, very early between the Zionist movement and the United States.
And they are, as I said, they had something which is constant and which we can see through all the years going on.
And these principles which I'm going to introduce to you today, began at least politically,
with President Woodrow Wilson, who was the first American president to deal politically with the Zionist movement.
That happened when the British government asked for his endorsement of the Balfour
Declaration after a lengthy process in which American Jewish Zionists were also involved.
Most known among them President Wilson's friend, Justice Louis Brandeis.
President Wilson granted his support to the declaration. The reason for his decision were a mixture of religion and idealism.
Woodrow Wilson grew up in a religious family. He was a keen and devoted reader of the Bible.
And his religious devotion led him to articulate deep Christian sentiment favouring the fulfilment of biblical prophecy in 1912.
He likened the Jewish longing to their homeland, to the spiritual feeling that motivated European immigrants to come to unknown America.
With that,
Wilson tied himself to a tradition that went back to the 17th century and to the Puritans that left mainly England and came to the new world.
The rhetoric the Puritans used was biblical.
They referred to themselves as the chosen people, singled out by God to an example for all nations, just like the biblical Israel.
However, when they claimed that they were new Israel,
the Puritans and those who followed them did not mean that the Jews ended up their role in history.
A common thought among Catholic Christians and also among some Protestant denominations.
When they likened themselves to enchant Israel, the Puritans and their successors thought that the Jews should go back to their homeland.
In fact, Protestant eschatology provided the basis for the appearance of the gentile Zionists who
preceded Theodor Herzl in their call for the re-establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
From the very first settlers, explains historian Hilton, over a single belief in Jewish restoration was endemic to American culture.
The call was and still is based on two major undercurrents existing command evangelical Protestant Americans,
the dispositional pre millennial ism and the inerrancy of the Bible.
According to the dispensed dispensation. I'll bring millennials in.
What you see here are seven dispensations and we are now in the seventh.
According to this dispensation,
all three millennial lists the time when God would engage with the Jewish exodus and would bring them back to their homeland in Palestine
was near the Jewish return would usher in eschatological process that would lead to the return of Jesus Christ and his 10,000.
In his thousand year reign, Christian salvation became dependent on the fate of the Jewish people and the return to the land God promised to them.
The other religious group is the fundamentalists who believe in the integrity of the Bible.
For them, God's promise to Abraham, to your descendants.
I will give this land is not just a religious text, but actual political decree and historical truth that should be implemented as written.
In 1985, about 40% of the Americans believed in the Bible's inerrancy,
and the poll made in 1996 revealed that 46% of the Americans believe that God promised the land to the Jews.
Believing that and believing the gut's promise to Abraham was in actual political decree.
No. No wonder that Americans, people and presidents could understand the Jewish claim to the territory they occupied by force,
even if politically they think that such occupation and all are problematic.
One vehicle through which many American people had learned about guts promised to Abraham.
Was the Sunday schools in 1998.
There were 164 Christian denominations listed in the National Council of Churches of Christ Yearbook in more than 73 million members.
In a survey conducted in the six in 16 of these with more than 2 million members,
it was found out that the Sunday school contained stories about Abraham, Joshua or both of them.
And the lesson to be drawn for those stories is that Israel was the land promised by God to Israel, to these very lights.
President Nixon tells in his memory that years of training at home, in church had their effect on my thinking and you can see the rest on the board.
This tendency were manifested in the CEO political rhetoric presidents and officials used to describe their attitude toward Zionism.
Expressing his pride in the role he played in the publication of the Balfour Declaration, Wilson said,
In order to think that I, the son of immigrants, would be able to help to restore the Holy Land to its people.
Four centuries later, in November 1953,
President Harry Truman was invited to the Jewish Theological Seminar in New York to meet a group of Jewish dignitaries.
His old friend, M.G. Jacobson, introduced him to the theologians to the civil law giants.
This is the man who helped to create the state of Israel, said Jacobson.
And Truman retorted, What do you mean, help to create?
I am Cyrus. I am Cyrus. President Jemmy Carter, who had a certain Carter who at a certain point became critic of Israel, wrote in his memories,
I consider this homeland of the Jews for the Jews to be incompatible with the teaching of the Bible, hence ordained by God.
It might be more for mentioning here that throughout the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century,
most of the evangelical Christians believed that the return of the Jews to their land should be God's work.
A way of thinking identical to that of Orthodox Jews.
Only if you believe that the Christian Church should actively assist the Jews together back in the land of Israel.
However, following the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948,
and even more so in the wake of Israel's territorial expansion following the June 1967 war,
more and more evangelical Christians turned to believe that indeed the prophecies were coming true,
and they shifted their spiritual beliefs in the return of the Jews.
Sorry. We don't want to stop now, right?
Just remind me later. Yeah.
So the prophecy were coming through and they shifted their spiritual belief in the return of the Jews to their homeland into active political creed.
Wilson Support for the Jewish homeland derived also from his ideas about self-determination and the power of democracy.
Those ideas were not disconnected from his religious education.
Combined with the political events unfolded in the wake of the First World War,
drawing from the Calvinist doctrine of equal opportunities, which was in the heart of the American Hegelian Hegelian egalitarianism.
Wilson believed that essentially all men were capable of self-government, either in actual or in potential.
His church, the Self-Rule Presbyterian Church, provided him with an apparent evidence of that ability in his politics, all future politics.
Wilson represented and helped to advance the cause of liberalism and Republicanism,
which led to the creation of foreign policy that emphasised individual rights and liberties with democracy embodying these rights.
This is evident from the following statement President Wilson made I believe great God presided over the inception of this nation
that we have chosen and prominently chosen to show the way to the nations of the world how they should walk in the path of liberty.
The Zionists use that rhetoric in their diplomatic campaigns.
They offered to build to the. I agree.
And they offer to build a national home for the Jews in Palestine and to substitute the tyrannical Ottoman rule with a liberal democracy.
Messages that fit well into Wilson's new diplomacy,
as well as his vision regarding the right of self-determination for national groups
and the kind of political regime and constitutions they should build for themselves.
Truman's advisers repeated this theme about three decades later during an argument that took place
in the White House between George Marshall and President Truman political adviser Clifford Clarke.
Clarke argued that the Democratic Jewish state would be a stabilising element in the Middle East in an area as unstable as the Middle East,
where there is now, not now and never has been any tradition of democratic government.
It is important for the long range security of our country and indeed the world
that the nation committed to the democratic system be established there.
Truman preferred his advisors position over Marshall's and the argument that Israel was and probably is the
only democracy in an undemocratic regime justified American support of Israel in the eyes of presidents.
Since then, American presidents justify their support of Israel also because it is a legitimate member of the international community whose
establishment was sanctioned first by the League of Nations and then reiterated by the United Nations November 1947 Partition Resolution,
when he debated whether to grant recognition to the state declared on May 15, 1948.
Truman consider this as a promise that should be kept, just as all promises made by responsible, civilised governments should be kept.
Quote unquote. The legitimacy of Israel and its right to secure existence were fundamental themes that
American officials from President down the ladder reiterated throughout the years.
Jewish history was another argument justifying down Americans strong attachment to Israel during the 19th century,
mainline American Protestants feel guilty for Christianity's historical treatment of the Jews and the
UNSC breakable cruelties they had suffered at the hands of European Christians for hundreds of years.
Carl VH was head of the American Christian Palestine Committee,
stated in January 1950 that Jewish homelessness and anti-Semitism are Christian created and therefore are Christian responsibility.
President Eisenhower was considered as a less friendly president to Israel, wrote in his diary in early 1956.
Israel has a very strong position in the heart and emotions of the Western world
because of the tragic suffering of the Jews throughout 2500 years of history.
The Holocaust only strengthened this sentiment. This was a sensitive issue,
mainly among mainline Protestants because of the intellectual leadership the German Protestant church provided to the American Protestant Church,
the passive support of the German Protestant Church and its followers of the Nazi rule deeply shocked American Protestants.
In 1942, in the middle of the Second World War,
a group of Protestants established the Christian Council on Palestine with Reinhold Niebuhr as one of its members.
The group's purpose was to arouse Christian concern in action in light of Hitler's persecution
of the Jews and to draw attention to Palestine as the only available refuge for the Jews.
The group was involved also in the reactivation of the American Palestine Committee and non-Jewish organisation.
President Truman was of course horrified by the Holocaust and President Jemmy Carter stated that memories of the Holocaust are still alive.
Ronald Reagan was just as much committed.
The Holocaust, I believe, left America with the moral responsibility to ensure that what would happen to the Jews under Hitler never happens again.
Israeli leaders on their part did not hesitate using the Holocaust as a reminder and a reason for the United States to support Israel.
David Ben-Gurion would reiterate this theme time and again in his contacts with various American presidents.
On one occasion, in a letter he sent to President John F Kennedy in June 19.
62, he justified Israel's request for arms in the following argument.
We are confronted with a unique security problem.
What was done to 6 million of our brethren 20 years ago could be done to the 2 million Jews of Israel.
A direct line leads from this message to Benjamin Netanyahu's insistence that Israel was still facing the threat of a second holocaust,
this time from Iran, fighting against the treaty negotiated with Iran over its nuclear program, Netanyahu stated.
Just ask. The Nazis sought to crush civilisation, so Iran seeks to dominate the region with the declared intention of destroying the Jewish state.
These arguments did find a chord in an America in the American heart.
Religion, values and history seem to put the United States on a prudent, predetermined course in its attitude toward Israel.
But can we say the same thing about Israel's association with the United States?
Was it only natural for Israel to seek a special relationship with United States?
Or was it a matter of convenience and expediency? Which is the world wishing to rely on the strongest power in the world?
The truth of the matter is that, unlike the nature of U.S. foreign policy,
the Zionist and Israel's foreign policy was and still is much more pragmatic and realistic than ideological.
From the very first days of its existence, the Zionist leaders attributed high importance to the support of a great power in the Zionist project.
Hertzel tried and failed to recruit the Ottoman Empire and later Wilhelm,
the second the German Kaiser to the Zionist cause, the Zionists were more successful in their attempts to recruit Britain.
One major result, of course, was the Balfour Declaration and later it was given mandate over Palestine.
The British practically acted to carry out the obligation they made in the Balfour Declaration.
However, the British chapter in the history of Zionism movement ended in May 1939,
when the British government published a white paper that set very strict limits on the immigration of Jews to
Palestine and limited significantly the ability of the Jews in Palestine to purchase land mainly from Arabs.
The Zionist movement sought now a new ally and the natural alternative was the United States.
However, the Zionists and the State of Israel did not appreciate the links with the United States because of America's moral standing and values.
It was the Jewish community and the way American political institutions could be used to advance Zionist and Israeli interests.
That led the Zionists to seek the support of the United States.
David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish community in Palestine during the years of the mandate
and Israel's first prime minister was well familiar with the United States.
He visited the United States for the first time in May 1915, during which he met Paula Montas, who became his wife.
The first visit was followed by many others during his visit.
Ben-Gurion used to spend a lot of time at the New York Public Library reading extensively about the history of the United States,
its political system. And in particular how policy was shaped in that most developed and democratic of nations, quote unquote.
Through his observations and study, Ben-Gurion came to appreciate both the American people and the American institutions.
He saw a resemblance between the Zionist and American pioneers and admired what those pioneers had achieved.
However, for Ben-Gurion, the more significant lesson and experience was the American political system, which gave power to public opinion.
Ben-Gurion was especially impressed by the way the American Irish had managed during the 1920s to become a
pressure group that mobilised American public opinion and gained American support for an independent Irish state.
The Jews should do the same, he felt for Israel. The free speech restored free press and free communication so abundant in the United States,
argued Ben-Gurion made it the most viable place for Zionist to mobilise the masses.
Jews as well as non-Jews towards the Israeli cause.
Ben-Gurion attitude toward United States should be viewed within the broader context of his view of the world and its relations with Israel.
Ben-Gurion believed that the Jewish people were unique in the sense that they were alone in the world.
A people who dwell alone. Throughout the history of the Jewish.
Throughout history, the Jewish nation was singular in its language, religion, culture and standing in the world.
Ben-Gurion believed that the Walt attitude toward Israel tilted from open hostility to compliance and acceptance of Israel's existence.
On the one side, still, the Arab countries who wanted to see Israel destroyed and on the other side stood the United States,
which acknowledged the right of Israel to exist but did not really care whether it would continue to exist or not.
That in October 1941, Ben-Gurion declared that he put no faith in princes, neither in Churchill nor in Roosevelt.
In this world, argued Ben-Gurion, where the Jews dwelled alone on the wall.
Jewry were Israel's true allies.
In it, Ben-Gurion sold the Jewish community in the United States as the hinterland of Israel and one of its most profound assets.
In July 1955, he stated, The Jewish community in the United States is Israel's only and true allies.
The American political system allowed the American Jews to become a strong power that could help Israel in times of need.
The Jews, argued Ben-Gurion, should exercise that power whenever Israel was in need of help.
In an address he delivered in August 1951 to an American Zionist organisation, he made that point.
The Zionist, to learn to live in free and democratic countries can and should always assist Israel.
There were about 5 million Jews in the United States in 1948, a small percentage within the total of the American population.
But their cohesiveness and organisation made them political power to be reckoned with.
The Jews as a collective did and do have political power beyond their numbers in society during the 1930 and 1940s.
Hmm. During the 1930s and 1940s, out of about 5 million American Jews, only 100000 to 150000 were Zionist.
They were the rest were none or anti-Zionist, which are not the same category, non Zionist anti-Zionist.
During those years,
the Jewish community as a whole became the richest community among Jews in the world and the richest ethnic community in the United States.
They had power and access to the corridors of power and they used that power and that axis.
Prominent Jews like Judge Louis Brandeis, they are all here above.
And now you can play the game of who is who. Prominent Jews like Judge Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Stefan s Wise, David Nies,
Abraham Fineberg and Max Fischer, to mention only a few had close ties with presidents.
Fineberg was an adviser on Israeli affairs to Truman, Kennedy and Johnson.
Fisher walked for 40 years with American presidents on Jewish and American issues.
His strong interconnection was with President Nixon.
Israeli diplomats deliver through the American Jews messages regarding issues that matter
to Israel and ask the Jews to exert pressure on the members of the administration,
either directly or through their congressional representatives where necessary.
More than that, as Jeremy Suri has shown in his study on Henry Kissinger, American Jews climbed along the ladder within the government,
holding high rank positions in the State Department and the White House gate.
They worked, of course, for the American government and were no less loyal to the United States than their non-Jew peers.
But they found it easier to discuss and to talk with the Israelis, who in turn found it easier to deal with them.
Thus, Ben-Gurion expectations for the American Jews were fully met.
The American Jews, Zionist and non-scientist led campaigns aiming to advance the Zionist ghost from
Brandeis involvement in convincing Wilson to support the Balfour Declaration.
The Zionist pressure on congressmen to endorse pro-Zionist resolution in the 1920s, up to the 1940s,
up to the active participation of Jews within the administration,
and out of it in the struggle that led eventually to the establishment of the State of Israel.
Philip Kucinich, one of the leaders of the Jewish community in the United States, outlined in July 1979 the logic of the American Jew actions.
As an American Jew, I have a dual obligation, but not a loyalty.
I have an obligation to my country in any way I can.
I have an obligation to my people, to the people. To my people from which I see them.
There is one example from October 1973, while the October war was raging, to demonstrate the American commitment to Israel,
which also includes in it an American Jewish commitment to Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
The Israeli ambassador seemed to deny it, negotiated with Henry Kissinger the delivery of tanks and plants to Israel.
Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon told the Israelis at an early stage of the fighting that
the United States would provide Israel with all the weapons it would lose during the war,
but only after the end of the war.
As the president, under Kissinger's advice, did not want the United States to look like it was siding too blindly with Israel in its war with Egypt.
Seymour Cardin is the Israeli ambassador to the United States at the time.
Asked which to argue with Kissinger over the play, the pace of the deliveries and this is how it's reported.
One of the conversation with Kissinger ended. I didn't put it here.
No. It's not here. No. Oh. Sorry, because I had the original document in its Hebrew, so I'll spell that with you in any case.
Kissinger Then it's reported back to Tel Aviv, saying in a shocking voice, Kissinger said, As long as I am here, I will not abandon Israel.
Was Kissinger at that time secretary of state and national security adviser, speaking as an American or as a Jew?
It's improper to assume that it was both.
Just as David Niles was acting both as a Jew and American in his advocacy of Jewish case when he talked with Truman,
Kissinger, who was branded at a certain moment as the husband of the Schechter, was speaking as American and a Jew.
And more than one American president made such pledge to the Israeli prime minister.
But it was never said in such a sentimental matter a manner and certainly not in a joking voice.
That is. Kissinger would not say or do anything that any other member of the administration would have done.
However, there was an attachment,
a connection that made the exchange and communication easier to have between Israelis and Americans such as Kissinger.
The case, the conversation between Kissinger and Dean.
It was another demonstration to the way Israeli and American high ranking officials talked with each other with no hindrances.
They would listen to each other, allowing the other to convince them.
Policy on matters pertinent to Israel had been made not in Washington alone.
It was a mutual process where the voices and interests of both countries were considered and measured.
Religion, ideals and history were the three pillars and bedrock upon which interest were waited,
and dialogue would flourish the interest of each country not always aligned.
But they were superseded by the constant,
or at least became a matter of discussions and negotiations which Israel and the United States could have in such intimate manner.
Does it all mean that the American Israeli relationship will continue to remain special in the future?
Probably. One thing I can promise you, if that won't happen, I will know how to explain that to you.
Thank you very much.